Coming Home
by Pinkie Tuscadaro
Summary: Johnny and Dally slash. Sometimes home isn't where you go but who you're with.
1. Chapter 1

"Look I…I just wanted to see if you were okay," Dally wasn't used to this, this asking/pleading of another person. He was used to ordering, to being in control.

"Yeah. I'm fine. Why?" Johnny standing on the little rotting porch, paint chipping and flaking off the porch, off the house. Glass beer bottles strewn here and there. Johnny's right eye was nearly swollen shut, all shiny purple in a circle around it, but what he could see of the eye, the white part, was red. All red. It scared Dally to see that.

He'd been asking, casually he hoped, if anyone had seen Johnny lately because he hadn't for awhile. The others shrugged, standing around the gas pumps, Steve and Soda in their light blue overalls, DX caps. As usual Ponyboy knew.

"Johnny got in trouble a few days ago. His dad whipped him. He's probably home,"

Dally scowled. After a whipping Johnny usually took off, slept in the lot or at the Curtis house for a few days. Not like his parents gave a shit. But if it was particularly bad Johnny would stay home, too hurt to leave.

And he stood on the porch now, pulling a cigarette from his battered soft pack, looking across the street, past the lines of houses, the streets. Dally didn't like to admit the thrill he got when Johnny was around, the feeling of light headedness.

Johnny looked so nice in the sun, his black hair gleaming, loaded with grease. How he could stand that Dallas had no idea, running a hand through his clean white blond hair. But it did look good, in style and all.

And sometimes Johnny would glance at him, smile a little, and his eyes were so big and so dark…Dallas scowled, bummed a cigarette and lit a match, touched it to the tip of the cigarette. Tried to look at Johnny without him noticing.

"Hey, kid, you wanna go play some pool?"

"Yeah," Johnny's answer was quick, and he hopped off the porch, pitched his cigarette into the dirt and the weeds.

"I've been in that house way too fucking long," he said, and his look darkened, the way it usually did if he talked about his parents or his house. And Dallas realized a funny thing. Johnny never said 'home', like Ponyboy would. He'd say, 'my house'.

They ducked into the darkness of the pool hall, Dallas first and Johnny following.

It was a friendly game, Johnny wasn't too good at pool, the same as he was with most games and sports. He had no hand eye coordination. So Dallas set up a few shots for him, just for the sheer delight of seeing Johnny smile. Sometimes he'd give anything for that.

And when Johnny was lining up a shot, brow furrowed in concentration, Dallas would stare at him, drink him in. The straight black hair, smooth forehead, his skin so tan always, even in winter. His teeth, the way the front two kind of angled toward each other.

He tapped the cue ball and it hit perfect and one of his balls went flying to the pocket. Dally hadn't set that shot up for him. Johnny looked up and grinned at him, and Dallas smiled back and thought, 'what I wouldn't give to kiss that kid right now,'.


	2. Chapter 2

Johnny. He looked too young to buy beers at most places but at this pool hall no one cared. The grizzled old bar tender with the thick gray beard didn't care. He cared about getting money, so he sold them one beer after the other, and Dally was surprised that Johnny drank as much as he did. His words were starting to slur and he couldn't focus on the game and Dally kept noticing the way his black hair hung over his forehead, obscuring his eyes.

"It's gettin1 late," Dally said, and Johnny looked up at him through his bangs.

"Yeah," he answered softly, and swayed, held onto the pool table for support.

"You don't usually drink so much," Dally said, helping to steady him. Johnny nodded, and Dal could tell that he was starting to feel sick.

"C'mon, let's go outside, you can puke there,"

"Jesus, Dal, I feel like shit,"

Dally felt almost guilty, he knew all that drinking wouldn't result in anything good, but he wasn't used to watching others so closely. He usually didn't care about anyone but himself.

He lit up a cigarette while Johnny puked over the side of the railing, and Dal remembered when he first started drinking and didn't realize when he was overdoing it. He felt Johnny's pain like his own and vowed he wouldn't let the kid drink like that again.

Shuddering and shaking, Johnny sat next to him and lit up a cigarette. Dally laughed.

"Feel better?" he said.

"Yeah. I ain't never gonna drink again," he said, making Dally laugh again.

"I've said that before. It ain't true, you know. You'll drink again, you just have to figure it out. Don't drink so much,"

Johnny nodded and smoked his cigarette, getting his color back. Dally gazed at the black eye, thinking how it made him look tough. He'd seen plenty of people hurt before, including himself, and it never fazed him. It was only Johnny. When Johnny was hurt he felt that pain worse than his own. He thought back to that day they found him in the vacant lot, the blood splattered all over his white T-shirt, the low moans of pain. He had felt this towering rage. He wanted to kill whoever had done that.

They sat on the edge of the steps, smoking a few more cigarettes. One thing he liked about hanging out with Johnny, he was never in a rush to leave. It was infrequent that he hung out with Ponyboy, but that kid always had somewhere else to be and something else to do. Homework, usually. It made him dizzy. Rushing off to do this and that. Useless. It wouldn't get you anywhere.

"Why'd you drink so much, anyway, Jesus, Johnny,"

"I don't know," Johnny said, looking kind of sad, kind of nauseas. Once in a while you can get Johnny talking, and it's those rare times that Dally looks forward to, when he can listen to his sexy, scratchy voice, the unique cadence of his speech.

"I think I'm just real fed up with my folks, you know? It's always the same thing, always all this fighting and drinking and I just, I don't know. I don't think I can take it anymore. I ain't going back neither. There ain't no reason to go back,"

Dally shrugged, having written his parents off years ago. Drunken old man who'd blackened his eye more than once, like Johnny. Dishrag old woman who caved to every weak request the old man made. He didn't need them, those drunken pathetic bums. But that was the difference. For some reason Johnny needed his parents, needed something from them that they were incapable of giving him.


End file.
